Implement a plan to annually survey all HUD program offices to identify nondisclosure policies, forms, and agreements issued and to determine whether they include the anti-gag provision as required by WPEA and, as necessary, to take corrective action to ensure that they include the anti-gag provision.

Communicate across HUD that (a) HUD employees are required to include the anti-gag provision in nondisclosure policies, forms, and agreements applicable to HUD employees and (b) program offices should consider requiring their employees to request OGC assistance when implementing and enforcing nondisclosure policies, forms, and agreements applicable to HUD employees.

The CDO should coordinate with HUD’s Records Office, Privacy Office, and program offices to develop data policies and procedures for data inventory, categorization, and labeling in support of zero trust architecture.

Status

HUD provided a corrective action plan for this recommendation in May 2025. The planned corrective action requires the agency to acquire a data management system, develop cataloging standards, and coordinate with the program offices stated in the recommendation to ensure data is handled in a secure manner. The procurement process has not yet begun, yet in their initial plans, HUD will require vendor support to develop this tool. The estimated completion date of this recommendation is September 2027.

Analysis

By addressing the recommendation, HUD will be positioned better to protect and prioritize protection for data in its IT systems. This will allow HUD to have a better understanding of the specifics of the most sensitive data as well as allow recommendation 2024-OE-0002a-03 to be addressed by HUD.

HUD maintains billions of records of PII and sensitive data within IT systems and the IT environment. Knowing more specifics about the data is essential in the ability to protect and recover from attempted exfiltration attempts.

Implement a process to identify teleworkers most at risk of receiving incorrect locality payments, verify that their official duty stations are correct and they are reporting to their official duty stations as required, and if necessary, correct their locality payments.

Determine how to measure the impact of recruitment efforts related to individuals who identiy as Hispanic or Latino.

Implement a process to measure the impact of recruitment efforts related to individuals who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Implement a process to collect and maintain information about recruitment efforts related to indiviuals who identify as Hispanic or Latino from all HUD program offices and their respective field offices.

Implement a transparent process for reviewing open-ended exit survey results and sharing those results with ODEEO, as appropriate, and program offices while still protecting former employees’ confidentiality.

Assess what departing employees mean when they indicate that organizational culture is a motivation for leaving HUD.

Develop guidance for the program offices to identify the causes behind high attrition rates in governmentwide high-risk MCOs and field offices in large cities.

Develop guidance for program offices to develop program office-specific action plans to address any causes found for high attrition rates in governmentwide high-risk MCOs and field offices in large cities.

Create a single, unified agency-specific MCO list updated to reflect current progress toward closing skills gaps.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

We recommend that the General Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Policy Development and Research, and the Deputy Chief Information Officer, Office of the Chief Information Officer develop the project management documents, as required by HUD’s Project Planning and Management Life Cycle V2.0 policy, including obtaining required approvals and ensuring that an adequate project risk management process is established for identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risks.

We recommend that the General Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Policy Development and Research; the Deputy Chief Information Officer; and the Director, Office of Disaster Recovery, identify and incorporate at least one additional data source into the Disaster Recovery Data Portal to further assist grantees with duplication of benefits assessments.

Ensure there are resources available for further development of geocoding services that fulfill HUD’s responsibilities stated in 43 U.S.C. § 2808(a)(5) and 43 U.S.C. § 2808(a)(12) through the reactivation of the lapsed Geocode Service Center contract.

Standardize position descriptions and job analyses for mission-critical occupations, high-risk occupations, and positions with high-volume staffing needs.

Develop and share best practices with HUD’s program offices on how hiring managers can execute hiring process responsibilities to meet timeliness goals.

Determine the cause for the variations in the timeliness of the preemployment and security checks step in FY 2017, 2018, and 2019 and develop appropriate process improvements.

Develop and document comprehensive reference documents on the hiring processes, procedures, roles, and responsibilities.